CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

The Old Man moved the tank closer to the hill, near the falling walls of a village that had once occupied the slopes nearest the highway. A place once called Wagon Wheel Mountain if a faded sign was to be believed. Ted’s people huddled in small groups, eating shared rations given out by the horsemen and drinking water from leather-skinned bags. The Old Man walked forward to where the Boy stood amid the warriors.

The Boy’s muscles still trembled and twitched as he too held a water skin to his mouth.

“Who are these people?” asked the Old Man.

The Boy lowered the bag and opened his mouth to speak.

“The real question should be,” said a tired voice from behind them, “who is he?”

The Old Man turned at the sound of the voice.

A crippled man and old like me.

“That is the million-dollar question, if a million dollars were still worth anything beyond kindling.”

The Crippled Man was small and thin. His hair, what remained of it, was wispy, his eyes milky, his legs bent and twisted as he sat in the dust between two giant horsemen who’d carried him into the impromptu camp after the battle.

“What do you mean?” asked the Old Man.

The Crippled Man crawled forward and when he reached the feet of the Boy, he beckoned for him to bend down. The Crippled Man ran his fingers just above the feather that hung in the Boy’s hair.

He muttered to himself.

He waved the Boy back up and crawled back between his bearers.

He looked straight into the eyes of the Boy.

“I made that feather seventeen years ago. Maybe more, maybe less. But I made it.”

The Boy undid the leather thong and brought the feather down, holding it under his green eyes.

“I made it bent like that with some glue I’d manufactured. Epoxy we called it once. Made it from the wreckage of my plane.”

Silence. Some of the horsemen muttered in their pidgin.

The Old Man heard, “Como,” and “Fudgeweisen.”

The Boy stared at the broken feather.

Silence.

“Why?” asked the Boy softly.

“Because,” replied the Crippled Man. “It was who you were. Who you are.”

“Broken Feather?” asked the Boy.

The Crippled Man looked up, considered the sky, seemed to mumble to himself in some agreement, then looked back and said, “Yeah, that could be one way of saying it.”

The Old Man saw the Boy tighten his jaw.

He saw the Boy nod to himself.

He never really knew where he’d come from. Where his starting place was in all this.

No, he never knew, my friend, where his course began on the map he’s carried for all these years. It has bothered him all his days and he has been looking for his beginning in all the places he has ever been. And he never found it, until now. The meaning of it. What the feather meant to him and the people who had first given it.

“You were born that way,” said the Crippled Man. “Because of the radiation. Many were in those days. Not so many now. But in those days there were many birth defects. From the moment you came out, we could see that you would be weak on that side.”

“And you threw me away,” said the Boy through clenched teeth in the silence that followed. “You gave me away.”

Everyone watched the two.

The Crippled Man and the Boy.

“No. I have no idea what happened to you,” said the Crippled Man. “You were very little when your mother and father, and a few of the other warrior families, tried to make it into the Tetons. There wasn’t enough here and we were fighting with other groups of survivors constantly. Those times brought out the worst in people. So your father, if he was who I remember him to be, was part of an expedition that went up into the Tetons. We never heard from them again. Years later when we sent scouts to look for them, there was no trace.”

The Boy remembered cold plains.

His first memory was of running. Of a woman screaming. Of seeing the sky, blue and cold in one moment, and the ground, yellow stubble, race by in the next.

“And now you have returned to us,” said the Crippled Man. “A brave warrior who inspired us to victory where we saw none. You charged out against our enemy with your weapon all alone.”

“I was … it wasn’t what you thought.”

The Crippled Man considered the Boy and his words.

“No. It never is.”

“Why did you come to our rescue?” said the Old Man.

“We’ve been shadowing you since before Santa Fe. Those are our lands. We thought you were working with these people. There was nothing we could have done against you. We fought a battle against them at Pecos Creek when they initially entered our lands a couple of years back. That was a hard day and our losses were bitter. Still are. But when a report came to me that one of you was wearing our badge, the feather, well, then I hoped.”

“Hoped for what?” asked the Old Man.

“Hoped you might not be with them.” He pointed toward the bodies lain out on the slopes of the hill. “Hoped we were finally getting a break.”

Silence.

“I’ll be honest,” continued the Crippled Man. “I wasn’t convinced he was of our tribe. I didn’t remember a warrior like him. But I hoped all the same. Or maybe I was just stunned to see one of our old tanks still working. I figured if you two just wiped each other out, then that would be best for us. There aren’t too many of us Mohicans left these days.”

“Mohicans?”

“Yes. It’s my little joke from long ago that’s sorta stuck as a name for us. In the days after the bombs, the people who rescued me, the people I would lead, we called ourselves that. It was our bad little joke in a very bad time. And there were days when we felt as though we were indeed the last.”

I know those days.

“When I saw what you were trying to do,” said the Crippled Man, “to rescue these people, when I saw him run out into the field to fight them all alone, when I saw his feather through my ’nocs, I knew he was one of us. And I knew I just couldn’t let him die all alone. That wouldn’t be right, now would it?”

Silence.

“Thank you,” said the Old Man.

“Truth be told I thought it was the end of us too. Like I said there aren’t many of us left. I thought, oh well, and ordered the attack. I thought we’d all get killed together. But I guess we caught them by surprise.”

That night they made camp out on the plain, the conical hill still in view. Large groups of women and children had come up from the hidden creek bed. Tents were up and a large buck that had been killed was spitted and roasting.

In the first breezes of night, as the sparks were carried away from the fire, the Old Man sat watching the meat, listening to the Boy tell the story of his whole life.

It was the tale of a young boy raised by a soldier. The last American soldier. There were days of hunger and cold. And there were good times also. They crossed the entire country to complete a mission.

“What’s there?” asked the Crippled Man when the Boy told of how they’d finally made it to Washington, D.C.

The Boy shook his head and said, “Nothing.”

When the story was done and the Boy had told how Sergeant Presley had died and how he’d buried him in the cornfields, the Old Man said, “He sounds like he was a good man.”

Silence.

Sergeant Major Preston.

Staff Sergeant Presley.

Long after the country had given up, they were out there, still soldiering. Still trying to save their country when the rest of us were only trying to save ourselves.

We need more of those kind of people.

More Staff Sergeant Presleys.

More Sergeant Major Prestons.

What is a soldier?

A soldier is someone who never gives up.

Yes, my friend.

The Boy finished his tale by the side of the grave in the cold cornfield with winter coming on.

But there is more he will not tell us tonight.

When I found him he was mad with grief. So it’s probably something he still carries with him.

He said to you, You take everything with you, my friend.

The meat was ready.

A woman in soft buckskin carved the first piece and offered it to the Crippled Man.

He nodded his head toward the Boy.

All eyes watched as the dripping and steaming haunch of meat was carried to the Boy. They had all seen him carry that massive shield, wielding that immense weapon, riding an ancient war machine into battle against impossible odds.

They had seen him stand alone against many.

The Boy swallowed thickly.

Hungry.

Then …

“Please give it to my friends.” He turned to the Old Man and his granddaughter. “They found me when I was … lost.”

The Old Man held up his hands in protest.

But the look from the Boy, the look from all of them, stopped the Old Man.

The Old Man tore it in half, handing a piece to his granddaughter.

“Thank you, we are very honored.”